800 DR. G. J. HINDE ON RECEPTACULITID. 
gonis and Ischadites, and states that T'etragonis appears to be merely 
Receptaculites with the ectorhin removed. He institutes a com- 
parison between the structure of the wall of Receptaculites and that 
of the gemmule or resting-spores of the fresh-water siliceous sponges 
of the genus Spongilla, and regards the small birotulate spicules, or 
amphidisks, and the enveloping coriaceous membrane of the gemmules 
of Spongilla as analogous to the spicules of Receptaculites. 
In the same volume, Billings also describes as new species Recep- 
taculites calevferus and R. elegantulus from the Calciferous forma- 
tion, R. canadensis and R.? insularts from the Silurian of Anti- 
costi, and 2. Jonesi from Lower Helderberg strata at Gaspé. 
Mr. J. W. Salter, in the ‘ Paleontology of Niti in the Northern 
Himalaya’ (1865), p. 47, t. 5, gives a definition of Spherospongia 
as a new genus, in which he includes a sponge from the Caradoc 
rocks of Britain (without giving either the name or the description 
of the form), and two species, S. melliflua and S. inosculans, from 
the Himalaya. The generic definition by no means corresponds 
with the characters of Spherospongia tessellata, Phill., sp., the real 
type, and Salter seems to have included therein the characters of two 
or three heterogeneous fossils. Of the species enumerated from the 
Himalaya, only one, S. mosculans, probably belongs to the present 
group, and this, as Salter remarks, much resembles Jschadites and 
may provisionally be included in that genus. 
Dr. W. Dames, in a memoir on the Devonian deposits in the 
vicinity of Freiburg, in Lower Silesia (Zeitschrift der deutschen 
geologischen Gesellschaft, Bd. xx. 1868, p. 483, t. 10. f. 1), gives a 
detailed account of the structure of Receptaculites Neptuni, Defr., as 
shown in examples of this species from Ober-Kunzendorf, which 
agrees in the main points with that of Billings, though Dames 
failed to perceive, in the so-called endorhinal plates of this species, 
the apertures and the interior canals described by Billings in the 
inner plate of R. occidentalis ; but he states that there are certainly 
more than four canals in the ectorhinal plates. Dames denies that 
any real similarity exists between Receptaculites and the gemmule 
of Spongilla, on the grounds that there is no evidence of the origi- 
nally coriaceous character which Billings attributes to some of the 
integumentary plates of Receptaculites, and that the spicules of the 
fossil genus are much larger at the periphery than near the nucleus; 
whereas the amphidisks of Spongilla are of unitorm dimensions 
throughout. In conclusion, Dames places Receptaculites with the 
Foraminifera, in proximity to the family of the Orbitolitide, and 
proposes to form for it, with Tetrugonis and Ischadites, the family of 
the Receptaculitide. This author further mentions the occurrence 
of Receptaculites in shales of Carboniferous age at Rothwaltersdorf. 
Messrs. Meek and Worthen, in the ‘ Geology of Illinois,’ vol. iii. 
(1878), described, and figured for the first time, two species of 
Receptaculites, R. globularis and R. Oweni, from the Galena strata of 
Illinois. They also figure, as a doubtfully new species, a specimen 
which, from the figure, appears to be identical with the form placed 
under Lf. globularis, which, it may be stated, really belongs to the 
